Insights From A Professional Leader

14

Nov

Conquering Mondays

“Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” This quote from the 1999 movie “Office Space” has been said over and over again in everyday life. For many, Mondays are a very real ailment, but there are ways to turn this around and make Mondays just as great as the other four weekdays.
The first thing you can do in order to make the beginning of the week better is by preparing yourself at the end of the week. Meaning you should use Fridays to start preparing for Mondays. Try to get the most dreadful work done on Friday that way you won’t have to worry about it on Monday. However, if this is not possible, try to do that work first thing Monday morning. Next, unplug for the weekend. If you can help it, keep your work at work and use personal time for what you actually want to do.
Additionally, try to go to sleep early and wake up a little earlier. This advice goes for any day, but especially Sundays. Getting up earlier allows for a little leisure time in the morning as opposed to rushing to get ready and immediately speeding off to the office. Finally, be positive! Mondays may be hard, but if you tackle them with a smile on your face and an appreciation of your work, you can automatically improve the day.
What are other ways to avoid the Monday blues?

Building Successful and Long-Lasting Teams, Part 2

In the first installment of ‘Building Successful and Long-Lasting Teams’, I discussed three ways to ensure stability and success for a long-lasting team. Today, I am giving you the last three ways leaders can ensure their team is built to last.

To recap, the first three ways to long-lasting teams are:

Be aware of how you work.

Get to know your team.

Define roles and responsibilities.

Forth, be proactive with feedback. Feedback assures that your team is staying on track and improving everyday. Feedback should be proactive—do not wait until a problem occurs before giving feedback. Allow proactive feedback to be your team’s facilitator for ongoing improvement.

Fifth, acknowledge and reward. People are most appreciative of respect. Take the time to give team members the recognition they deserve. Do not take performance for granted, as your team members want to feel as though they are making a difference. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to pay attention to the team’s efforts and genuinely reward them for completing each task.

Sixth, always celebrate success. Team members must understand why they were successful and how their success positively impacted those around them. Take the time to celebrate accomplishments. This is more than acknowledgement—take a step back and reflect on what the team has accomplished and celebrate those who have taken big strides towards reaching that success.

What are your thoughts on building successful and long-lasting teams? Are there any additional proven ways you would add?

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CT Leadership is a company that focuses on ways to improve the “people” side of business. The goal of the company is to identify particular enabling faucets and patterns that limit performance growth and slow overall production. CT Leadership creates a strategic road-map through professional leadership development and guidance, individual assessments, high performance team development and interactive training sessions.